Manga drawings skills, chat & chill!
Sundays this summer have been the day for some chilled out drawing since Manga artist Irina Richards began leading us through our online Manga Sundays sessions. It’s definitely been a friendly place for budding Manga artists to meet up, with lots of chat going on alongside drawing about all things Manga (… & cats – which could also be Manga?!)
It’s been so cool to watch everyone’s drawing evolve..
Irina has been screen sharing as she draws & illustrated how to draw:
- Manga faces – from the front and side
- Manga hair (this can be pretty big & sometimes spiky)
- Manga eyes (including shinies!)
- Emotions using eyes, eyebrows and mouth expressions
- Kawaii (cute & simplified faces which were apparently the origin of emojis)
- Chibi characters – small child like figures with exaggerated emotions & big round faces
- Figures – using action figures to help us with poses & proportions (child = 3 heads, adult = 6/7 heads)
- Hands and fingers (this was hard but then apparently, “art is not always straightforward” – Irina)
- Your story – sketching out beginning, middle & end using ‘Yon Koma’ – a series of comic boxes
- Your ‘OC’ (original character) – original drawings you can refer back to as you develop your story!
- Backgrounds + foreground and midground characters – creating a whole scene!
We also talked about research you might want to do before you start your story:
- Where is your character from?
- What would they wear?
- What is their home / environment like?
Check out Irina’s @haveyoutalent instagram takeover!
- Get the details on how, when and why Irina got into Manga drawing
- Take a look around her home studio & see a ClipStudio demo
- Find out where she got the inspiration for her best known work ‘Chemical Blue’
- See inside her latest graphic novel Witchmarked and…..
- See Irina’s amazing collection of pens!!!
“Love your art!” – Irina Richards
Kit list for Manga artists:
- A good pencil or two (sharpened)
- A rubber
- Some nice paper (but any paper will do!)
- A black fineliner pen – or you can use a handwriting pen or a biro instead
- Some nice colouring pens or watercolour pencils (Irina uses Copic Markers)
- A Wacom drawing tablet (not essential)
- Clip studio – you can try this out for free!
Irina & Annabelle (one of Irina’s Manga students who helped with our Sunday sessions) put together a padlet of resources & challenges to help everyone along with their Manga drawing skills!
All the work below in our Manga Sudays GALLERY was created by participants during the 6 week programme:
